The Female Perspective: Wonder Woman 2011

Welcome! This blog is written by author J.L. Metcalf and will chat about comics, movies, garden gnomes, ghosts or even books and daily life. It is a place where I offer my ladylike perspective on anything and everything my brain can think of.

Adrianne Palicki as Wonder Woman.

If you read my blog on a regular basis, you know I am a big fan of Wonder Woman. I am nervous, yet excited for the upcoming Superman vs. Batman movie that will include Wonder Woman. Well, today I was made aware of a 2011 Wonder Woman TV pilot episode. Now, this may not be news to many of you but I had no idea it existed. I thought, cool, I’ll give it a watch and see how they did WW in 2011! It starred Adrianne Palicki (who I very much enjoy on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D amongst other stuff) along with Cary Elwes and Elizabeth Hurley, I thought, cool, they have some decent star power.

Then I got into the show and I was struck dumb because…what? Where was my Island of Amazon Women? Where was my awesome WW mythology? Her first experiences with our world? Where was all that really great stuff?!?!?

It was gone. Gone like it never even happened.

Instead, we are shown a WW who is the head of a multi-million dollar company called, Themyscira, and she not only goes by WW, she also goes by Diane Themyscira (the head of her company) and Diana Price? WTF? I’m sorry but why does she have to have so many personas? To confuse people? Because that is all I got out of it. Not to mention Diane Themyscira is known by the world to be Wonder Woman so yeah, there’s that too. Also, her “secret-secret” identity, Diana Price wears glasses and a ponytail. Well, I’d never recognize her, not with glasses and a ponytail!

Who is this person? Oh why, it’s Diana Prince! Clearly she is not Wonder Woman because of the glasses and ponytail.

OK. OK…I’m taking deep breaths and remembering two things, this was never picked up because, yeah, it stinks and it was made way back in 2011 before we had shows like Arrow, The Flash, Constantine and even Gotham. We had only just seen Scarlett Johansson kick butt as Black Widow in Iron Man 2, so we were only beginning to love and obsess over the Marvel Cinematic Universe and all the awesome they would soon delivery in terms of fight scenes, strong women characters, etc.

The fact is, watching even twenty minutes of this show makes you see how awful it is. The music is campy, the dialogue is worse than anything even George Lucas could write and the fight scenes are…well, boring. I have high standards for Wonder Woman specifically and action scenes in general. After watching a show like Arrow really rock the fight scenes, I expect all TV shows to follow suit. Not to mention, this show seems to suffer with an identity crises. It didn’t seem to know if it wanted to be like a comic book or a TV drama, leaving the viewers confused.

I did enjoy her outfit in this version. Though, inexplicably, she busted out the full leotard at the end…

The other thing that really bugged me was how they showed WW trying to have a normal life (in her glasses and ponytail) by hanging at home alone with her cat and learning Facebook and watching The Notebook. Really? That was disappointing to see her acting so…normal (superhero don’t act so normal at night, they do…superhero stuff!). By ignoring the WW mythos we give her no depth, no real personality. All we see is this empty shell of a woman who also happens to fight crime and argue with her staff. She’s tall, beautiful and smart but she’s also all alone in the world. I get why she broke things off with Steve, yeah, she didn’t want him to be in danger but in all that time, she has made no real connections? No friends? Even Batman had friends!

Overall, I was clearly disappointed in this pilot and have hopes that since there have been major leaps in portraying super hero on film that not only will Gal Gadot be better at WW, she will be treated as hero, not as some otherworldly creature without a soul.

Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman…looking pretty fierce…

Oh yeah, please make sure she does not have a group of girls who run around after her calling “We Love You Wonder Woman!” It also really bothered me that when she finally took down the baddies, she goes back to her office and the ENTIRE OFFICE is waiting to applaud her efforts. It seemed off, wrong, the antithesis of what a super hero is. They don’t do it for the glory, they do it because it’s the right thing to do. With the exception of a few hero’s who love the glory (Tony Stark comes to mind) it seems like the exact opposite of what I would expect WW to do. I would expect her sneak back in to change and talk with staff, not march through the office!

One last thing, what’s up with her saying, “Do you like my outfit? This outfit opens doors for me…” Seriously?

Anyway, have you seen it? Click the link below to check it out and tell me what you think in the comments!